By Peter\nGuttenh\u00f6fer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Memorandum\nfor an elementary handling pedagogy<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On our beautiful earth, nature is at risk.\nFlowers and animals disappear from the planet, everybody talks about the\nclimate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But something else is at risk: childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In every country of the world the pressure\non children is increasing: school enrollment is gradually being moved to an\nearlier age, governmental curriculum is enforced for the first ten years of\nlife, reading is taught at the age of three, competition is being intensified\namong the children, lots of tests, classes become more intellectual, less\nmovement, no arts, no playing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At home: family structures are breaking\ndown, stressed parents, unemployment, poverty, children sitting alone in front\nof the screen, computer games. Even the rich people\u2019s children are poor!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let us do some necessary steps to preserve\nchildhood! Let us give our children at least 10 years of childhood! Only this\nway will they be able to have enough fantasy to reshape life on earth in a new\nand better way when they become adults. Because we’re dealing with the earth\nand the youth forces of the earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The whole idea of \u201cSchool\u201d must be\nre-thought anew! Schools, where children can live, play and work in such a way\nthat their natural gift of imagination can turn into creative fantasy. We need\nschools where they can live without pressure or fear thus being happy while\nthey learn and grow healthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1.) School endangers childhood<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The civilization that has spread from\nWestern Europe across the world is hostile to childhood. Life in the cities\nclearly shows this fact: every unsupervised movement of a child is a danger to\nhis life. Playing is forbidden. All that matters is the unlimited\nself-fulfillment of the adult person in every material aspect of his being on\nearth. Childhood and old age are nothing more than annoying, inevitable\nside-effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Childhood has to be useful. As soon as a\nchild shows the first signs of having its own imagination, governmental\nregulations intervene: compulsory school attendance for all children. The\ntendency worldwide is now to anticipate compulsory school enrollment to the\nfifth year of life. Economic cost-profit thinking drives educational processes,\nboth regarding the organization as well as the contents. It is a known fact\nthat all over the world most teachers are underpaid; to the children’s\nunhappiness is added that of their teachers. This leads to the default\nantipathy between teachers and students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The child is still seen as an object of\nsocialization, not as the subject of its own upbringing. It is still not\nregarded as a person who has the right of free development and education, but\nas a person who must attend school. The truth is that the duty lies in the\nhands of the adults; when it is born, the child steps into his own rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This new consciousness is expressed in the\n1989 UN-Convention on the Rights of Children that has been signed by almost\nevery nation in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we can only fully realize the ideals\ntherein formulated when we fully acknowledge what Janusz Korczak has said: \u201cThe\nchild doesn\u2019t only become a human being, it is a human being!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The current debate about child-abuse has\nbrought to light the fact that in those hideous individual cases, a deeper\nlayer of life is brought to the surface , in which unpurified instincts and\negoism create a dangerous mixture with the basic instinct of our modern\ncivilization which is the need to take possession of everything. The effects of\nthis deep layer are expressed, among others, in the worldwide despotic\npedagogy, in the style of the school buildings, in the lack of flexibility in\nschool timetables; in a word: a regular day of school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To acknowledge the child as a subject of\nhis self-education is hard enough, but the idea has finally reached mankind. A\nnext step towards change, the direction of which is shown in the following\nRudolf Steiner\u2019s quote, is necessary: \u201cEvery education is self-education and we\nas teachers and educators are only the surroundings of the child educating\nitself.\u201d To adapt these surroundings to what the child needs in order to\ndevelop fruitfully, would mean, for every adult, a deeply-rooted transformation\nof living and thinking habits. Civilization would have to be remodeled from the\nfoundations up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The starting point is the following\nprinciple: teachers and children work and learn together. Children of our age\ndon\u2019t accept the \u201cmaster\u201d anymore, and are even less willing to accept to be\nisolated from real life all day long through timetables and school rooms. In\nthe best \u2013 or worst \u2013 case they submit to it. From 12 years on they start to\ndefend themselves. Problems that come along are defined as problems of\ndiscipline. But the truth is that it is in the very child’s nature to desire to\nbe active, but the school of the modern time prevents the child from being\nproductively active.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The child\u2019s will is projected towards\nactivity; teachers and educators shall therefrom derive the program for their\nself-education. Rudolf Steiner\u2019s pedagogy was originally based upon the fact\nthat the teacher is a learner and does not necessarily have to be an\nacademically educated pedagogue. Today we can add: Teachers must be workers. To\nput it the other way round: why are farmers and craftsmen not involved in the\nprocess of education and upbringing? The typical teacher today is a person who\nis released from productive work at the costs of society in order to\nconcentrate on educating children. Even the children themselves are freed from\nany kind of work to have time for learning. In rich countries this situation is\nideally supposed to last up to the age of 25 or 30. That economies cannot pay\nfor it becomes slowly visible. That it is an important contributor to the ruin\nof the earth has become clear only to a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
School today is the result of the cultural\nprocesses in Middle Europe over the last 250 years, which during their course\nhave brought about the fragmentation of life processes. This fragmentation is\npainfully visible in the fact that learning and working, playing and working,\ncraftsmanship and education, childhood and industrial societies, rural and\nurban life have been fully separated from each other. Today school is a place\nwhere children become alienated from life. Dispositions are artificial and the\nso-called \u201cmotivation\u201d of students is nothing more than the coercion deriving\nfrom the need to pass exams and to earn the related qualifications. This is\nhostile to children because the child is a being of the present which\nexperiences its sense of existence directly in a spiritual-sensitive way, and not\nthrough an envisaged future or by any representation of gaining some\ncompetences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2.) Transformation of school<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But how must school be to represent today’s\nchildren environment? Novalis showed the way in his fragment \u201cPaedagogik\u201d:\n\u201cEducation of children, like the training of an apprentice, by them gradually\ntaking part in the activities of adults, and not through direct education.\u201d The\neducating adults must be busy! But not busy in the direct education of\nchildren, but busy with work that originates from life’s needs. This also\nincludes writing, reading, calculating, and singing. And how does the\napprentice learn? In the first seven years by imitation, in the second seven\nyears by following the adult’s model. This creates images of adults working\nmeaningfully, whose work is worth being imitated and the model followed,\nbecause the adults express themselves in visible activities, in movements of arms and legs reasonably conducted. And\nthe genius of the child who lives in the environment of such occupations is\nseen in the process of practicing its self-education by imitating and following\nthe model of adults. This we call play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Occupations worth imitating are farming and\ngardening, craftsmanship and domestic economy, where “food” is\nproduced through the transformation of substances and which, unfortunately are\nnot part of the educational field called \u201cschool\u201d. Rudolf Steiner has\nintroduced them in the field of teaching; this is one of the distinctive\nfeatures of Waldorf education. But especially in these fields is mankind\nbecoming increasingly aware that a reductionistic view of the world and the\negoistic striving for profits lead to the destruction of the fundamentals of\nlife. This can already be seen in the catastrophic impact of industrialized\nfarming on soil and landscape, on bees, on the quality of our food etc., it is\nshown in the torture of our animals, in the dying of our woods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The destruction of ecological systems and\nthe dangers of climate change wake us up and demand new strategies. Here ideas\ncome together: adults turn back to the earth und abandon the idea of endlessly\ngrowing profits and massive livestock breeding; the respect for our fellow\ncreatures who are willing to serve us becomes the guideline for our decisions.\nAnd they take the children with them! They don\u2019t confine them in Kinder\nGardens, nurseries, schoolrooms, but they work together with the adults, the\nyounger ones playing, the older ones gradually participating in the activities\nthat the grown-ups do, as Novalis wrote.\nWe feel the need for a new curriculum. We see a new ranking of subjects as main\nand side subjects, and the worldwide Holy Cows of the mastery of the mother\ntongue, of national literature and mathematics are ranked at the same level as\nthe new main subjects of farming and craftsmanship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An ideal surrounding for this kind of\neducation would be a farm. But the farm itself needs a deep-rooted modification\nand renewal, if it is supposed to be a \u201ccomplete surrounding\u201d (Goethe,\nP\u00e4dagogische Provinz) for the self-educating child and, at the same time,\nsupport the farmers that live and work in it. So, we don\u2019t mean a “school\nfarm” but a community of working people who, by devoting themselves to\nbiologic-dynamic farming, want to regain the juvenile forces of the earth\nitself. Again no direct education which is disadvised by Novalis, but the\nintegration of the child into this working environment, where it can live in\nthe adult\u2019s stream of will. The schoolroom also belongs to this environment,\nbut changed in its form. Outer and inner rooms become together a complete\nsurrounding. The way this can be created in detail depends on many conditions\nand cannot be discussed here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is obvious that the ideas mentioned here\npoint to one specific direction where the ideal is to be guessed and should be\nsearched. But it would be reality blindness, to expect that biologic-dynamic\nfarming could also save pedagogy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two ideas lead us further:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3.) Small is Beautiful<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What a human learns in his first years of\nlife – and how he learns it – is extremely important to shape the course of\nlife. We will not consider here the first three years of life, as we wish every\nchild on earth to grow up at least in this first period of life within a loving\nfamily. That this wish is not a reality for hundreds of thousands of children\nleads into a new area of difficulties, that in connection with the\nconsiderations given cannot as well be dealt with herein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is about drawing a draft picture of a\nlearning place where the child can live, learn and blossom from the 4th to the\n10th year of life; a sketch of “school”, in which three years of\nKinder Garden and four years of school establish a continuum of seven years. At\nthe end of this development phase the child has reached a stage where,\naccording to modern “salutogenesis” research, it is equipped with the\n“basic tools” of the faculties of coherence (inner connection with\nthe world) and resilience (the power to\nacknowledge and overcome obstacles).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At this stage in childhood development,\nwhich is pictorially called \u201cRubikon\u201d in the anthroposophic anthropology, the\nchild has established to some extent its individual biological, emotional and\nspiritual health which are the source of power that enables it to manage the\ncrisis of the following years and of life in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If a child is allowed to grow up, at least\nto the above mentioned age, in an atmosphere in which the “free unfolding\nof his personality”, as is required by the fundamental law, has had the\npossibility and the time to take place, it will be fit for the challenges to\ncome. Within this period, that comprises 3 years of Kinder garden and four\nyears of “school”, learning need not be ruled by governmental\nperformance standards. It is thinkable that the children’s performance\nstructure in the 4th year of school is adapted to governmental guidelines to\nallow them to move to any other school without problems. (In many countries there is also the\npossibility of \u201chome-schooling\u201d for the primary school period). At least the\nfirst three years of school could be freely devised, and certainly the three\nyears before school starts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 7-year period that we are presently\nconsidering, should be strictly structured according to the psychological\ndevelopment of the child and the pedagogic points of view. Especially during\nthe transition from Kinder Garden to school can we follow distinctive\ndevelopments of individual children; this would lead to a structure which could\nease a little the problems caused by the early school enrollment that is being\npromoted all over the world. We comply with the required school attendance but\nthe details of the pedagogic methods are freely definable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In many places on earth, where social,\neconomic or cultural conditions are adverse to the establishment of a\ngovernmental system, or even a multi-articulated school system, such small\n“schools” should be established with little means: not every teacher\nand educator needs an academic background; on the contrary, completely\ndifferent competences are also required other than only those that can be\nacquired by attending Universities or teacher seminars. We don’t have to think\nat expensive school buildings; no large teacher council, which quarrels to\nexhaustion in the conflicts of group dynamics, financial aspects, organization\nand school administration remain manageable. In a word: Small is beautiful,\naccording to the world famous book by E.F. Schumacher, 1973.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some countries \u2013 mainly in the southern\nhemisphere \u2013 school politics carries on what colonialism did, even if it is\nconsidered to be over: to implant the European and American way of living and\nthinking into the young souls of peoples which are politically free but often\nbadly shaken in their identity. The leading elites of those peoples send their\nchildren to \u201cInternational schools\u201d or to the \nboarding schools of their former colonial masters; primary schools are\nconceivably badly equipped and structure their curricula according to European\nrequirements which, as is well known, also carry with them a \u201chidden\ncurriculum\u201d whose world conception is equally as far away from modern\nscientific cognition as it is from the still surviving wisdom of peoples living\nin a traditional way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A significant contribution to the\nacquisition of a new identity is only possible through careful consideration of\ntheir own cultural and spiritual roots, of their own language, of the\nsurrounding landscape, etc. But this today is only possible in the first few\nyears of school, trying to avoid excessive conflicts with the school\nauthorities in charge in each country. In higher grades it is about adapting\nthe students to the present social system of society into which they are to\nintegrate. This is what governments have to do. Also this thought devises the\nprospect of a small schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Basic School<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In those seven years it’s about allowing\nchildhood to blossom, individual health to develop, create the foundations of\ngeneral education and to practice work. Waldorf-pedagogy, which is spreading\nall over the world since the last 90 years, works, starting from the\nanthroposophical knowledge of man given by Rudolf Steiner, on the anthropological\nand methodological principles of this assignment. Besides the development of\nintelligence and the unfolding of the child’s soul, special focus is given on\nthe development of his willpower. According to the basic ideas of elementary\npedagogy that are discussed herein, Waldorf-pedagogy shows its need to be\nfurther developed. Looking at the children\u2019s needs and led by the question:\n\u201cWhat do the children of today need to know in 30 years?\u201d this shows us our\ntasks which are presented in paragraph 2.). \nTo change curricular contents and methods in the secondary and high\nschool confronts us with the obstacles that were mentioned before. The first 4\nyears of school and the Kinder Garden are, as previously said, the most\nmodifiable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The full beauty and depth of Waldorf\npedagogy already unfolds itself in the first four years; work and play flow one\ninto the other, the world contents reveal themselves through images; children\nand teachers co-operate to the formation of a destiny community, in which there\nis no competition but where mutual help is practiced. In every sixth grade new\nproblems arise, because the children\u2019s relationship with the world and with\nother people constitutionally changes at the age of 12. Basic School could also\nbe prolonged into the 5th grade, depending on the possibilities and\ncircumstances of the location and the people. But work in the 6th grade would\nbe determined by completely new didactical and methodological guidelines. For\nthis reason Basic School should only last for the first 4, maximum 5 years of\nschool. To this new school form also belong, as previously said, three years of\nKindergarten for a total of 7 or 8 years altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thus we have the picture of a minimal form\nof “school” that offers a complete pedagogic proposal for children\nbetween 4 and 10 years of age. It is not a fragment of a regular school, not\n“just” a primary school, but a new complete institution, which means\nthe creation of a new learning place for children of the mentioned age. It can\nbe established with relatively low financial means and manpower; the\nresponsibility for a possible further path of education of single children can\nonly lie in the hands of those who offer the means for it. In order to imagine\nsuch a Basic School we must abandon the idea of a Waldorf school that takes\ntwelve years of education, and focus on the powers and competences which are at\nhand in times of childhood crisis. The small “schools” will become\nseeds for completely new learning places, whose detailed image we still lack the\nfantasy to conceive. We want to build rescue islands for childhood and\ntherefore also for mankind’s ability to use its fantasy.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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